Purpose/Summary

Humans have been launching space vehicles into Earth orbit and to other solar system destinations for a little more than 50 years now. During that time there have been a number of studies summarizing those launches and documenting the successes and the failures. This report was written to supplement those previous studies and to perhaps look at the 50 years of historical data from a slightly different perspective.

Much of the data contained in this orbital launch database study summary results report are available from a number of different sources. A search on the internet for “launch vehicle data” yields in excess of a half a million applicable websites and data sources. Research data related to orbital launch attempts was entered into a database for easy sorting and consolidation. Of particular interest was the launch rate and failure rate information contained in the data. With this data in a simple database it became possible to then extract subsets of the launch rate and failure rate information. For example, the launch rate data for a particular launch vehicle family or a specific launch site can now be summarized. This then allows for launch vehicles and launch sites to be compared using the historically available data.

Scope

The database associated with this study and this report focuses on orbital launches only. The intent of the launch attempt is to place an object (i.e., a spacecraft or payload) into a stable orbit around the Earth or on a trajectory away from the Earth’s sphere of influence. Suborbital launches, ballistic missile launches, and research rocket (i.e., what used to be called sounding rocket) launches are not considered to be applicable to this study. As a result, the human occupied suborbital launches of the Mercury Program and those of the SpaceShipOne Program are not included in this database or report.

In addition, this report only addresses orbital launch data for launch attempts taking place between 04 Oct 1957 (the launch of Sputnik 1) and 25 Dec 2007 (the launch of Kosmos 2434, 2435, and 2436). Any orbital launches or launch attempts that have occurred in 2008, 2009, and so far in 2010 are not included in this data or this report. That data has been added to the database (the database is being updated with current data) but is not included as part of this summary.

Also, this report does not address whether the overall mission was a success or not. It only examines what effect, if any, the launch attempt had on the success or failure of the mission. It is totally possible that the launch of a spacecraft (payload) was completely successful but that somewhere along the way the spacecraft (payload) failed and the mission objectives were not achieved. Two examples standout: the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter. Both spacecraft were successfully launched and sent to the red planet. Both failed to meet their planned mission objectives when the first one failed to land safely on the planet and the second one failed to safely enter orbit around the planet. From a launch vehicle perspective both of these missions were a success.

Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Database Elements

Numerous abbreviations and acronyms are used throughout the aerospace industry. Keeping track of them is a difficult and time consuming job all by itself. Some, if not all of the abbreviations and acronyms used in this report are defined in Table 1.1. Defined along with the abbreviations and acronyms are the two-letter designators used to identify the launch sites and the three-place alphanumeric designators used to identify the launch vehicle families in the database. These designators allow for quick and easy sorting of the data for a particular launch site or a specific launch vehicle family.

Orbital Launch Study Definitions

Some definitions relating to this database and study are given in Table 1.2.

Database Queries

Once the database was established it was then possible to perform a series of queries against the data. This is a relatively easy process in Microsoft® Access. To date nearly 2000 queries have been made against this simple database. These can be grouped into essentially four broad data sort categories. These four broad categories are:

These four broad categories are then further subdivided into several subcategories. The paragraphs that follow provide detailed information about these five broad categories and the database query results. These are addressed in the same order as shown in the bulletized broad category list.

Special Note Regarding USSR and Russia Data

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Russia launch attempt data has been combined in these summaries as if they were a single continuous entity. In reality the data should be summarized by the USSR from October 1957 through December 1991. The USSR ceased to exist after the December 1991 date. The data from January 1992 through to the present (December 2007) should be summarized for Russia. Other than the dates, the launch vehicles and launch sites remain the same. Therefore, the data was combined into a single USSR/Russia country/launch provider.

Data Line Coding Standard

Generally, in the graphical representations of the launch attempt data an overall Total is represented by a solid black line and an average is represented by a long-dashed black line. Under the solid black line a single short-dashed black line represents the launches performed by the United States of America (USA), the single dotted black line represents the launches performed by the USSR/Russia, and the dashed-double dotted black line summarizes an accumulation of the launch attempts by all other countries/launch providers. This line style standard is maintained in all of the graphical charts as summarized in Table 3.2.

Launch Attempt Data by Year

Referring to Figure 4.1, note the launch rate build-up in the first 10 plus years of the data (October 1957 through December 1967). A recent space flight history documentary on one of the cable television channels characterized the first few years of the so called space race as being dominated by a rapid build-up in the Soviet (USSR) launch rate. The historical data do not support this conclusion. As can be seen by the plotted data in Figure 4.1 and the supporting data in Table 4.1 the USSR launch rate did not exceed the USA launch rate until 1967. It was the USA launch rate that rapidly increased after the launch of Sputnik 1 and just as rapidly decreased after 1966.

Launch Attempt Data by Month

Figure 4.2 illustrates the plotted data for orbital launches by month. There are a couple of interesting results shown in this graph. First, the USA (single short-dashed black) and Other (dashed-double dotted black) orbital launch attempt lines are relatively flat. This could be interpreted to mean that the launch attempt rate is relatively stable from month to month during a nominal year. Second, the USSR/Russia (single dotted black) line shows a couple of interesting “bumps” in the data. The most radical is the dip that occurs between December and January with a second, smaller dip in November and a third, even smaller dip in May. There are no obvious reasons for these “bumps”. They may be related to budgetary or political constraints. In particular, the December–January dip may be related to the yearly budget for launch operations. It is also interesting that the other two dips occur exactly 6 months apart. Table 4.2 summarizes the raw data used to construct the Figure 4.2 graph.

Launch attempt data by day of the month

Figure 4.3 charts the launch attempt data by day of the month. Again, the USA (single short-dashed black) and Other (dashed-double dotted black) data lines are relatively flat from day to day. The interesting feature here also occurs in the USSR/Russia (single dotted black) line. A significant dip in the USSR/Russia data occurs on the 13th of the month. Why the 13th? The answer to this question is unknown but, again, perhaps it is related to culture and the superstition tied to the number 13. Running a query against the database for all launches on Friday the 13th yields a total of 25 launch attempts (8 USA, 15 USSR/Russia, and 2 Other). Only one of these launch attempts was a failure (USA Delta launch on 13 May 1960). So the dip in USSR/Russia data does not appear to be related to superstition. Table 4.3 provides the raw data used in the Figure 4.3 graph.

Launch attempt data by day of the week

Figure 4.4 charts the launch attempt data (as summarized in Table 4.4) by day of the week. Here again the data illustrates some interesting results. Note that the data in Figure 4.4 is ordered by Monday through Sunday versus a calendar Sunday through Saturday order. Given this arrangement, the USA (single short-dashed black) and Other (dashed-double dotted black) lines are relatively symmetrical about Thursday as a mid-point. On the other hand, the USSR/Russia (single dotted black) line is symmetrical about the first five days of the week (Monday through Friday) with Wednesday as the mid-point. Then the launch attempts significantly tail-off on Saturday and Sunday. Again, the reasons for this non-symmetry are unknown. It may be attributable to the culture and work ethic in the USSR/Russia.

Overall launch vehicle data

Figure 5.1 graphs the total number of launches for the 16 launch vehicle families detailed in this study report. Meanwhile, Table 5.1 summarizes the information used to construct this figure. In Figure 5.1 the data is arranged from the least number of launches (5 for the GSLV) to the greatest number of launches (884 for the Soyuz). In column 1 of Table 5.1 the launch vehicle families are arranged in alphabetical order based on the launch vehicle name.

Individual Launch Vehicle Family Type Historical Data

Figure 5.2 through Figure 5.17 graph the launches for each of these 16 launch vehicle families on a year-by-year basis. The launch vehicle graphs are arranged alphabetically by the launch vehicle family name (i.e., in the same order as shown in column 1 of Table 5.1). The section “Launch Vehicle Data Summaries” provides the data from the database that was used to construct the graphs in Figure 5.2 through Figure 5.17. Each of the figure captions provides a reference to the appropriate summary table found in this section (for example, Figure 5.5: graph of Delta (DLT) launches by year (see Table 5.6)). Likewise, the table captions in the “Launch Vehicle Data Summaries” section provide a reference back to the appropriate figure (for example, Table 5.6: Delta (DLT) launch vehicle launches by year data (see Figure 5.5)). Figure 5.18 combines the data for the 16 individual launch vehicle families into a single year-by-year graph of the number of orbital launch attempts. The supporting data can be found in Table 5.19 in this section. For each of the figures (Figure 5.2 through Figure 5.18) the heavy black dashed line in the graph is the launch vehicle family’s calculated yearly launch average.

The launch vehicle data will be the most controversial results of the database queries. The reason for this controversy is that launch vehicle configurations are not static and seemingly change dramatically from launch to launch. Technically, the launch vehicle data should be summarized by launch vehicle variants. For example, the Delta II launch vehicle is a significantly different launch vehicle to the Delta IV launch vehicle. And there are differences within variants. The Delta IV Medium is a significantly different launch vehicle to the Delta IV Heavy. However, accounting for all of these variants and configurations would substantially increase the number of queries to the database. This would also require a significant number of designators to assist in making the queries. For those reasons it was decided to limit the launch vehicle data queries and summaries to an identified set of 16 launch vehicle families. These 16 launch vehicle families are currently used launch vehicles and cover 74.5% of all of the orbital launch attempts (3636 out of a total of 4882 launch attempts) from October 1957 through December 2007.

As was stated previously, in reality there have been more orbital launch vehicles launched other than the 16 listed in Table 5.1. For example, the USA Titan, though designed as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), served as an admirable orbital launch vehicle for many years after its development (219 launches from 8 April 1964 to 19 October 2005). Similarly, the USSR/Russia Vostok vehicle had its beginnings as an ICBM and was successfully used as an orbital launch vehicle (168 launches from 23 September 1958 to 29 August 1991). Table 5.2 provides a summary of the launch history for almost all of the launch vehicles used over the last 50 years. There still is a summary category called Mixed that is a catchall for some odds and ends launch vehicles. An example in this category would be the USA Pilot launch vehicle. This was a U.S. Navy program that launched a small satellite with a missile from a F4D Skyray aircraft used as the first stage. Of the six Pilot launch attempts made in 1958 all six were unsuccessful (100% failure rate).

Launch Vehicle Data Summaries

The following data tables Table 5.3 through Table 5.19 provide the data that was used to construct the graphs presented previously (Figure 5.2 through Figure 5.18).

Launch Sites Around the World

There are a significant number of orbital launch sites located around the world. Table 6.2 provides a listing of the 23 launch sites currently in use. In Table 6.2 the country or launch provider is identified in the first column, the launch site name is then shown in column 2, and finally the Latitude and Longitude coordinates are provided in the two right-hand columns. Launch site information highlighted in bold text in Table 6.2 indicates that it is one of the 14 launch sites that are detailed further in the next section of this report.

Figure 6.1 uses a rough world map to depict the locations of the 23 worldwide launch sites. Each of these sites has its advantages and disadvantages depending on where it is located and the type of payloads being launched from the site. Note in particular the location of two launch sites: number 10, the Plesetsk Space Center in northern Russia, and number 23, the International Sea Launch Platform in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Both of these (especially Plesetsk) will be discussed in further detail in the following sections.

Launch Attempt Totals and Launches per Year by Launch Site

Table 6.2 from the previous section highlights 14 of the world’s busiest launch sites. Of the 4882 launch attempts between October 1957 and December 2007, 4825 (98.8%) of them have occurred from these 14 launch sites. Figure 6.2 provides a graph of the total number of launches from each of the 14 launch sites for the database time period. The launch sites are arranged along the x-axis by the least number of launches (Sea Launch with 24) to the greatest number of launches (Plesetsk with 1599). The fifteenth launch site on the Figure 6.2 graph labeled Mixed includes a variety of odds-and-ends launch attempts from the other 9 launch sites. For example, the Pegasus, which uses a L1011 aircraft as its launch platform, has been launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base (launch site number 1) and from Edwards Air Force Base (launch site number 2). These launches are included in the Mixed count.

The 1599 orbital launches out of Plesetsk is a remarkable total. This number is remarkable not only because of the fact that it represents 32.75% of the overall number of launches conducted worldwide but because these launches were conducted under some of the harshest weather conditions in the world. Anecdotal historical data reports that during the initial days of the development of the site (February 1966) the daily temperature never got above − 45°F. This harsh weather is a direct result of the site’s location just 3 degrees below the Arctic Circle. At 62.8 degrees North latitude, Pletsetsk is located at the ideal location for launching spacecraft into what is called the Molniya (Russian for lightning) orbit.

The Molniya orbit is a high-inclination (63.4 degrees), highly elliptical orbit with an orbital period of 12 hours. This orbit has an apogee altitude of around 40,000 km (approximately 24,855 statute miles) and a perigee altitude of around 500 km (approximately 310 statute miles). USSR/Russia used/uses the Molniya orbit for a variety of spacecraft types. The primary use is for both military and civilian Communications spacecraft. The high dwell time at apogee allows for more than 8 hours of communications relay time. Thus, three spacecraft in appropriately phased orbits provide for 24 hour communications coverage over the northern latitudes of Russia. Likewise a Surveillance spacecraft situated with the apogee over a target country provides 8 hours of constant coverage over that target country. This type of orbit has also been used for Navigation spacecraft constellations, Weather, Earth Observation, and Atmospheric Research spacecraft.

Note that in Figure 6.1, the number 23 for the International Sea Launch platform is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The typical launch location for this ocean going launch platform is 1400 miles east of the Hawaiian Islands directly on the Earth’s Equator. It is at this equatorial location that the program takes full advantage of the Earth’s rotation and maximizes the payload weight launched by the Zenit launch vehicle. For more information about Sea Launch visit the company’s official website at: www.sea-launch.com/.

Figure 6.3 is based on the same data provided in Figure 6.2 except that the y-axis value is now launch rate per year. This is calculated by determining the number of years the launch site has been operational based on the first orbital launch from the site and then dividing that number into the number of launches from Figure 6.2. The launch sites are now arranged along the x-axis by the least number of launches per year (Wallops Island with 0.66) to the greatest number of launches per year (Plesetsk with 38.22).

Table 6.3 summarizes the data from the database used to construct both the Figure 6.2 and 6.3 graphs. The columns related to Failures and Failure Rate will be discussed in the next section of this report.

Individual Launch Site Historical Data

Figure 6.4 through Figure 6.17 provide graphs of the launches for each of these 14 launch sites on a year-by-year basis. The launch site graphs are arranged alphabetically by the launch site name. The section “Launch Site Data Summaries” provides the data from the database that was used to construct the graphs in Figure 6.4 through Figure 6.17. Each of the figure captions provides a reference to the appropriate summary table found in this section (for example, Figure 6.10: Graph of Plesetsk (PL) launch site launches by year (see Table 6.11)). Likewise, the table captions in the section “Launch Site Data Summaries” provide a reference back to the appropriate figure in this section (for example, Table 6.11: Pletsetsk (PL) launch site launches by year data (see Figure 6.10)). For each of the figures (Figure 6.4 through Figure 6.17) the heavy black dashed line in the graph is the launch site’s calculated yearly launch average.

Launch Vehicle Launches at Specific Launch Sites

Several USA, Chinese, and USSR/Russia launch vehicles can be launched from multiple launch sites. For example, the Delta (DLT) launch vehicle can be launched from both the Cape Canaveral (CC) and Vandenberg (VA) launch sites. Of the 16 launch vehicle families listed in Table 5.1 the eight shown in Table 6.4 fall into this multiple launch site category. The figures listed in the right-hand column illustrate the launches by year of the listed launch vehicle from the specified launch site.

In addition, a now retired launch vehicle, the Titan (TTN) (USA) was also capable of being launched from both the Cape Canaveral (CC) and the Vandenberg (VA) launch sites (219 launches). However, because it is a retired launch vehicle the details of those launches are not included in this report. Other retired launch vehicles that fall into this category are:

Launch Site Data Summaries

The following data tables (Table 6.5 through Table 6.19) provide the data that was used to construct the graphs presented previously as Figure 6.4 through Figure 6.18.

Launch Vehicle/Launch Site Data Summaries

The following data tables (Table 6.20 through Table 6.37) provide the data that were used to construct the graphs presented previously as Figure 6.19 through Figure 6.36.

By Launch Vehicle Family

Figure 7.1 illustrates the historical failure rate data for the 16 launch vehicle families documented in Table 5.1. The raw data supporting the development of this figure is provided in Table 7.1. In the case of both the figure and the table the data is organized to list the launch vehicle with the lowest failure rate first and the one with the highest failure rate last.

The historical data clearly indicates that the Shuttle (USA) (failures rate of 2.5%) and the Soyuz (USSR/Russia) (failure rate of 2.7%) (both used for human spaceflight) have the lowest failure rates of the 16 launch vehicles shown. The other launch vehicle used for human spaceflight (the CZ [Long March] from China) has a historical failure rate of 7.7%. In reality the variant of the CZ used for human spaceflight has had six successful launches (two for human spaceflights) with no reported failures.

By Country/Launch Provider and Launch Site

Figure 7.2 depicts the historical failure rate data for the 14 launch sites listed in Table 6.1. The raw data that this graph is constructed from is summarized in Table 7.2. The data in both the figure and the table is arranged with the launch site with the lowest failure rate first and the one with the highest failure last. Note that the Mixed category contains an odds and ends assortment of launches from launch sites such as Woomera in Australia, Palmachim in Israel, Edwards Air Force Base in the USA, and Svobodny in Russia.

Remember the discussion in the section “Launch Attempt Totals and Launches per Year by Launch Site” about the remarkable number of launches from the USSR/Russia Plesetsk (PL) launch site? Now look at the failure rate at this launch site. It has the lowest failure rate (4.38%) of all of the launch sites listed. So, this remote Northern latitude launch site has simultaneously achieved both the highest launch rate and the lowest launch failure rate in history.

• There are significant dips (i.e., reductions in the number of launches) in the USSR/Russia launch data for the 13th day of the month and for the month of November.

• The fact that the busiest launch site (Plesetsk in Russia) is also the launch site with the best reliability record.

• Many of the launch vehicles with an extensive history dating back to the early 1960s show a dramatic improvement in reliability (i.e., reduction in failure rate) from the early days until the present.

• Two of the human-rated launch vehicles (the USA Space Shuttle and the USSR/Russia Soyuz) have the lowest failure rates of all of the launch vehicles being used today. However, the failure rate for the Chinese CZ (Long March) (used for their human spaceflight launches) is three times greater than that of the Space Shuttle.

• Launch rates have dropped off dramatically since the fall of the USSR and the end of the cold war.

• USA and USSR/Russia launch rates have dropped off in recent years but this has been balanced by a steady increase in the launch rates for China, Europe, India, and Japan along with that of the Sea Launch International consortium.

• The planned retirement of the USA Space Shuttle in the year 2011.

• The completion and use of the Soyuz launch facilities at the Kourou launch site in French Guiana.

• The completion and use of the Soyuz launch facilities at the new Vostochny launch site being developed by Russia.

• The completion and use of the Tsiklon launch facilities at the Alcantara launch site in Brazil.

• The initiation of Angara launch vehicle tests from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

• The potential resurgence of the commercial launch market especially in the area of cellular telephone communication satellite constellations.